Monitoring Compressors and Production Equipment to Increase Your Run Times

Problem Area

In the coming years, industrial and oil and gas companies will continue their current trends toward the downsizing of field operations. As a result of downsizing there are fewer man-hours that an operator can spend at any one location. This means that there are fewer hours available for field personnel to look for and evaluate mechanical problems associated with critical production equipment such as natural gas compressors. When a problem does occur, field personnel only have time to re-start the compressor/engine and observe the operations for a short period of time before leaving to check other sites, often of which are many miles away. Increasing workloads on fewer field personnel may dictate that sites be visited only once or twice a week in comparison to a daily basis as before. If a mechanical problem or malfunction causes the compressor to go down, significant production revenue can be lost as there is no way to know the status until someone returns, possibly days later.

Solution

The solution is to install a cost effective, self contained monitoring and alarm system such as the Sentry WatchDog 1100 that provides you voice data, call-in status reporting, and an auto-dialout feature. This feature enables the WatchDog 1100 to call key personnel and alert them as to the status of their critical operations via pager, telephone, mobile phone, radio, or answering machine.

Benefits

Gas compressor monitoring combined with proper instruction of field personnel will provide increased production revenues resulting from higher “on stream” performance. Monitoring also provides the ability to better schedule field personnel for they themselves become empowered with the ability to know what the status of their production equipment is at any time, from anywhere!!!

Example

When an engine driven compressor used in “Gas Lift” applications goes down, so does the associated oil production. Oil production ceases and associated “Gas Lift” gas vents to the atmosphere until the operator becomes aware of the situation. The operator must work with the well(s) to re-establish stable production. Many times this can take all day to several days and during this time, other locations and potential problems are left unattended.

Other similar applications include the monitoring of saltwater disposal pumps, circulation pumps, transfer pumps, wellhead safety systems, and production equipment.